It won’t work unless the operator is relaxed

Another entry for the ‘I thought I was beyond being shocked’ category – a very expensive ‘bomb detector’ that has nothing in it but ‘the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores.’ Iraq has been paying $40,000 apiece for them – and using them to detect bombs – and they can’t detect bombs because all they have is ‘the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card.’

Well that’s a nice way to make money!

The Iraqi government has spent $85m on the ADE-651 and there are concerns that they have failed to stop bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of people…The device is sold by Jim McCormick, based at offices in rural Somerset, UK. The ADE-651 detector has never been shown to work in a scientific test. There are no batteries and it consists of a swivelling aerial mounted to a hinge on a hand-grip. Critics have likened it to a glorified dowsing rod. Mr McCormick told the BBC in a previous interview that “the theory behind dowsing and the theory behind how we actually detect explosives is very similar”.

Oh is it! So what was it doing on the market then?

He says that the key to it is the black box connected to the aerial into which you put “programmed substance detection cards”, each “designed to tune into” the frequency of a particular explosive or other substance named on the card. Newsnight obtained a set of cards for the ADE-651 and took them to Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory where Dr Markus Kuhn dissected a card supposed to detect TNT. It contained nothing but the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores. Dr Kuhn said it was “impossible” that it could detect anything at all and that the card had “absolutely nothing to do with the detection of TNT. There is nothing to program in these cards. There is no memory. There is no microcontroller. There is no way any form of information can be stored,” he added. The tags which are supposed to be the heart of such an expensive system cost around two to three pence. “These are the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card,” Dr Kuhn told Newsnight.

20 Responses to “It won’t work unless the operator is relaxed”

I posted a comment that didn’t show up. Maybe it’s just held for moderation, since it contained links. Oh well, just enter “mccormick site:randi.org” (without the quotes) into a google search box to get the links. This is not news, unfortunately. As to how the guy can live with himself, I have no idea. Maybe he’s an atheist or something. They don’t even have a definition of “good”, you know.

Can’t keep up? Don’t take it personally. Nobody can. And if you try, you’ll lose your focus. I know, all the badness out there just looks like a big ugly blur to me. But once in a while, a beacon of darkness sticks out of the muck and overshadows everything else. This is one such item. (Okay, I’ll stop torturing metaphors now.)

Of course if the bombers believed that it worked, that might have deterred them to some extent.

While I’ve no sympathy for the manufacturer, surely the purchasers have demonstrated remarkable ignorance if they did not bother to check whether the claim actually has some scientific plausibility. Or, even worse, maybe they don’t know that such a step is required. That is, it may be a question of education.

Or a matter of corruption. When a regime buys millions of dollars worth of stuff from the West, there are often kickbacks to ministers, generals etc. Gosh, might that sort of thing happen in liberated Iraq and democratic Afghanistan? One cannot choose but wonder. Let’s hope somebody follows the money trail.

Well, yes, if you’re going to spend 40K apiece on ‘bomb detection’ devices it does seem worth doing some basic kicking of the tires. But still…people shouldn’t be able to flog ‘bomb detection’ devices that are just bits of cardboard and plastic.

On a recent newsbit on the current drug war in Mexico, I saw Mexican military/police using just such a gadget.

An officer wash shown inserting a playingcard-sized bit of plastic, labelled ‘cocaine’ into the mystery box. The network talking-head providing the voice-over made some mention of ‘new technology’ with a straight face.

Okay, in case someone missed it, I was making reference to the Monty Python hospital sketch. And I was wrong, it’s the machine that goes PING, not ding. Sorry about that. (The sketch is available on youtube.) And yes, Ophelia, I think the machine that goes PING is more than 40 grand. Much more.

[...] I remember blogging about that years ago. In fact [goes to find the posts] – yes, in It won’t work unless the operator is relaxed and Flashing lights, and a beeping noise. A bit from the latter: Call me sentimental but I do [...]